We are pleased to announce the release of the new version of SPAI:
SPAI, Version 3.2.

The code can be freely downloaded at the new SPAI homepage:

http://www.computational.unibas.ch/software/spai

The SPAI algorithm computes a SParse Approximate Inverse (SPAI)
of a general sparse matrix for use as a preconditioner together
with an iterative method (Bi-CGSTAB, GMRES, QMR, etc ). The algorithm
is robust, effective on ill-conditioned linear systems, and inherently
parallel. The approximate inverse can also be used as a (parallel)
smoother for multigrid methods. The code is written in C/MPI and
includes three Matlab interfaces.

The SPAI algorithm was originally derived by M.J. Grote and
T. Huckle (SIAM J. Sc. Stat. Comput. 18(3), 1997). The parallel
C/MPI version was written by S. Barnard. The new auto configure
installation procedure was developed by O. Broeker, and further
refined by M. Hagemann.

New features of SPAI 3.2:
- auto configure: automatic installation procedure
- fixed sparsity now available: banded or subset of original matrix
- Matlab interfaces to three functions: spai, spaitau, and spaidiags

I've recently added quite a few matrices to the UF sparse
matrix collection, which now totals 1368 matrices. Newly
added matrices include an MRI scan, circuit simulation,
computer vision/graphics, chemical process simulation, and
molecular density functional theory. Also new to the web
pages are color pictures of each matrix. New matrices are
always welcome.

It has been designed to achieve low to medium precision. It delivers a
numerical solution at the endpoint, a numerical estimation of the global error
at the end point and also gives some statistics about the integration.

It is based on the two-stage Gauss Runge-Kutta (Nystrom) method and it can
be adequate for time-dependant (second order in time) Partial Differential
Equations discretized in space by Method of Lines. Specially, when the
Jacobians are banded. Any suggestions or comments from users are welcome.

This month is the anniversary of some important events in the history of
computing. The two people with the most formidable claim to inventing the
computer, John Mauchly and Presper Eckert, were fired by the University of
Pennsylvania 60 years ago this month. Their proposal to build the first
digital electronic calculator was ignored by university administrators until
Lt. Herman Goldstine in April 1943 convinced the US Army to build what became
known as ENIAC. Even though the project supported roughly a dozen people, the
principals were not treated well: unlike some classmates the electronics
genius Eckert was never made faculty, and the visionary Mauchly had to give up
teaching to work on his project at lower pay. The university ceded rights to
Mauchly and Eckert until administrator Irven Travis reversed course. Dean
Harold Pender then gave Mauchly and Eckert an ultimatum to sign either patent
waivers or resignations on March 22, 1946.

The immediate impact was to disband the talented group that Mauchly and Eckert
had assembled. Perhaps only John von Neumann recognized the importance of
personnel continuity in innovation when he hired Goldstine and tried to hire
Eckert to build a programmable machine at the Institute for Advanced Study.
The lead shifted to England where the first modern computers (digital,
electronic, programmable) were built at Manchester and Cambridge based on
lessons learned from COLOSSUS, ENIAC, and wartime radar research. Today it is
not unusual to find millionaires among computer science faculty. The days of
coddled technicians, stock options, venture capital, and IPOs, were made
possible by the industry Mauchly and Eckert created.

An entertaining but emotional account of ENIAC is the book by Scott McCartney
reviewed by William Aspray at http://www.siam.org/siamnews/12-99/eniac.htm.
There is no balanced historical account of the early days of computers.
Scholarly books about individual machines are those by Nancy Stern about
ENIAC, and by Aspray about von Neumann and the IAS computer.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
6th Workshop on
PARALLEL/HIGH-PERFORMANCE OBJECT-ORIENTED SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING (POOSC'06)
July 3 or 4
at the
EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING (ECOOP 2006)
Nantes, France, 3-7 July 2006

While object-oriented programming is being embraced in industry, particularly
in the form of C++ and to an increasing extent Java and Python, its acceptance
by the parallel scientific programming community is still tentative. In this
latter domain performance is invariably of paramount importance, where even
the transition from FORTRAN 77 to C is incomplete, primarily because of real
or perceived loss of performance. On the other hand, various factors
practically dictate the use of language features that provide better paradigms
for abstraction: increasingly complex numerical algorithms, application
requirements, and hardware (e.g. deep memory hierarchies, numbers of
processors, multi-core processors, communication and I/O); and the need for
user-level fault tolerance.

This workshop seeks to bring together practitioners and researchers in this
growing field to `compare notes' on their work. The emphasis is on identifying
specific problems impeding greater acceptance and widespread use of
object-oriented programming in scientific computing; proposed and implemented
solutions to these problems; and new or novel approaches, techniques or idioms
for scientific and/or parallel computing. Presentations of work in progress
are welcome.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE : Prospective authors are invited to submit abstracts,
papers, or presentations (slides) in ASCII, PDF, postscript, or PowerPoint.
Submitted materials will be distributed at the workshop. Submission and email
correspondence to poosc06@lanl.gov.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: Please send a message to ami06@math.univ-lille1.fr

before May 10, 2006

if you wish to attend the conference.

PROCEEDINGS: A special issue of the Journal of Computational and Applied
Mathematics will be dedicated to Claude Brezinski on the occasion of his
retirement. We kindly invite to contribute to this special issue (which is
not limited to speakers of the conference).

The Twelfth International Congress on Computational and Applied Mathematics
will take place from July 10 to July 14, 2006 at the Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, in Leuven, Belgium. The congress concentrates on the analysis and
application of computational techniques for solving scientific and engineering
problems.

It is our pleasure to invite you to participate in the Congress and to
contribute a talk on the results of your recent research. Abstracts for a
short communication (30 min.) should be sent to the conference address before
March 30, 2006. Any abstracts submitted after the dealine will be considered
as long as time-slots in the program schedule remain available.

NASC is an international conference organized by Chinese numerical algebra
group starting from 2006. The conference highlights recent advances in
theoretical, computational and practical aspects of linear and nonlinear
numerical algebra.

The aim of the conference is to gather numerical algebra and scientific
computing experts to exchange ideas and discuss future developments and trends
of these closely related fields. The topics of NASC06 include, but not
limited to: solutions of linear and nonlinear equations; least-squares
problems; computations of eigenvalue problems; parallel computations;
constructions and analyses of preconditioners; methods and theories of
structured matrices; and applications of numerical algebraic techniques and
algorithms.

Aim and Scope:
Within the Forschungsschwerpunktprogramm "Industrial Geometry" founded
by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) we are organizing a workshop on
"Variational, PDE, and Level Set Methods" in Obergurgl, Tyrol, Austria
(September 1st - 3rd, 2006). The focus of this workshop will be on PDE
and variational methods on manifolds, as well as level set methods.
Theoretical as well as numerical aspects should be covered. We encourage
you to participate. You can enrol at the workshop homepage and if you
plan to give a talk or present a poster please submit an abstract there
or mail us.

As previously announced (see NA Digest, Volume 06, Issue 05), a one-day
meeting in honor of Professor Miroslav Fiedler on the occasion of his 80th
birthday will be held on
Monday, June 12, 2006 in Prague, Czech Republic.
The capacity of the lecture hall in downtown Prague where the conference will
take place is limited. The participants are kindly asked to register and
possibly reserve their accommodation on-line on the conference web page
www.cs.cas.cz/~fiedler80
by April 12, 2006 at the latest. The organizing committee has reserved a
limited number of rooms in guest houses of academic institutions which will be
allotted on first-come-first-served basis. Besides that, hotel rooms of
various categories are available. After April 12, registrations will be
accepted up to the overall capacity of the lecture hall, but the organizing
committee will be no longer arranging accommodation. In that case it will have
to be arranged by the participants themselves. The board and lodging expenses
are to be covered by the participants; unfortunately, we cannot offer any
financial support.

The conference is expected to be held from about 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with
two coffee breaks and approximately a one-hour break at noon for lunch in
nearby restaurants. Participants wishing to contribute should submit the title
of their talk together with a short abstract in LaTeX by April 30. In view of
the given time limitations, the organizers reserve the right to accept or
reject the contributions; the authors will be informed by May 12, and the
program will be available at the web site in mid-May.

In the evening the participants are invited to take part in a reception which
will be held from 7:00 to 9:30 p.m. The admittance to the reception is free,
as well as the refreshments served during the coffee breaks. There is no
conference fee.

Guang Gao and Charles E. Leiserson will present invited talks at IWOMP 2006 in
Reims, FRANCE. Dr. Gao, the founder and director of the Computer Architecture
and Parallel Systems Lab at the University of Delaware, will examine how
OpenMP maps to multi-core processor-based petaflop systems on June 12,
2006. The following day, Dr. Leiserson, who is the Director of System
Architecture, Director of Research, and Network Architect at Akamai
Technologies and a professor at MIT, will present the Cilk programming
language, a topic that is particularly relevant to directions for the OpenMP
3.0 specification that will likely add support for additional parallelism
models such as task queues.In other news, the IWOMP paper submission deadline
has been extended to March 22. For these and other IWOMP news items, please
visit the IWOMP web site, http://www.iwomp.org/.

The 9th Copper Mountain Conference on Iterative Methods is scheduled from
April 2 - April 7, 2006. As in previous even-numbered years, a Special Issue
of SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (SISC) is planned. This single issue
will be dedicated to recent progress in iterative methods.

The deadline for submission to the Special Issue is May 31, 2006. Attendees
and participants of the conference as well as the general community are
invited to submit papers. Submissions should be made using the ordinary SISC
submission process with a statement in the cover letter requesting that the
paper be considered for the special issue on iterative methods.

All interested should submit a manuscript and cover letter in PDF format via
SISC's online submission site at http://sisc.siam.org. Please see Author
Instructions on the site if you have not yet submitted a paper through this
web-based system. Note the block labeled Special Section (just under the
keywords block on your submission screen) and select "Copper Mountain Special
Issue 2006" from the dropdown box. Also be sure to note in the Manuscript
Comment text box at the bottom of this page that your work is intended for the
Copper Mountain Special Issue.

Papers will be subject to review by a guest Editorial Board. Manuscripts
submitted after the May 31 deadline may not be considered for the Special
Issue at the discretion of Guest Editor Panayot Vassilevski.

Following the death of the Founding Editor, Professor David J. Evans, Taylor
& Francis, the Publishers of the International Journal of Computer Mathematics,
have re-launched the journal with a new editorial team. The new Editor-in-Chief
is Edward Henry Twizell, Professor Emeritus (Mathematics) at Brunel University
in the U.K. There will be two Subject Editors and a greatly expanded
international Editorial Board, with many new members from North America, who
aim to return first reports from referees promptly. The Editorial Team will
commission several Special Issues each year.

The journal will continue to have two sections:
Section A - Computer Systems: Theory.
This section will contain work concerning research and development in computer
systems and the theory of computing in general.
Section B - Computational Methods: Applications.
This section will contain papers concerning techniques of interest to computer
users in numerical analysis, mathematical software, discrete mathematics,
computational geometry and graphics, image processing, pattern recognition, OR,
and computational modelling in the bio-medical sciences, chemistry, economics,
financial mathematics, and engineering.

Application is sought for 1-2 postdoctoral
positions with experience in scientific computation
in the area of electromagnetics and optics.
Please e-mail application to wcai@uncc.edu.
Or send the application to Prof. Wei Cai,
Department of Mathematics, University of
North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223.

P. Papazoglou, D. Karras and R. Papademetriou:
On new dynamic channel assignment schemes and their efficient evaluation
through a generic simulation system for large scale cellular
telecommunications ..
182--199